The GOP claims to be the party of business. That’s a lie.

44% of the people born in Montana now live somewhere else. That percentage has grown steadily since 1950. Why? Maybe it’s because of irresponsible political leadership like the leadership we’ve seen in the Montana House this week.

The Montana GOP is siding with those who have already made their fortune or had it handed to them. They are ignoring Montana’s youth, Montana’s sick, Montana’s working poor, and Montana’s infrastructure.

The GOP claims to be the party of business. That’s a lie. Business people know how to invest and how to keep your costumers loyal. Well, look at their business plan for Montana: absolutely no investment in our future. No wonder 44% of our population is leaving.

If you appreciate an independent voice holding Montana politicians accountable and informing voters, and you can throw a few dollars a month our way, we would certainly appreciate it.

In 1930, 62 percent of people born in Montana stayed in Montana. Eighty-two years later, in 2012, that statistic was down to 55 percent. In 1990, the number was down to 52 percent, so the exodus has stabilized and slightly declined. The year-to-year change is so small that it’s difficult to tie it to any political party. More likely, national economic conditions were the dominant factors. The exodus did markedly increase during the 1920s, when Republican champions of business Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover held the White House.

Montana is a sparsely populated state and will be for many decades to come. Economic opportunities along our coasts and in our cities draw our sons and daughters, as does the urge to make lives for themselves a healthy distance from their parents. That this is so is not a consequence of bad economic policy by Republicans or Democrats, but of geography and human nature. Even with the economic policies that Democrats favor for Montana, many of our children will say farewell to the Big Sky and seek their fortunes elsewhere. We should not expect any other outcome.

My daughter and son-in-law would love to return to Missoula. They’re both lawyers and tried to make it in Missoula for a couple years but had to move to Oregon for meaningful employment. Granted, UM’s law school cranks out a bunch of attorneys each year and many want to stay in Missoula. You swing a dead cat around downtown and you’ll hit three or four lawyers. Still, my kids had to leave and they want to come back. No insights here just a comment.

Were they to all come back while still alive, we’d have a much larger population. Those who were born here, but hate the place, never return. I was born in a flat, cold, midwestern state. I escaped 40 years ago and haven’t been within a thousand miles of it since. That Americans can move around the country freely and live where they want is one of the greatest things about this country. I don’t see a problem in pulling up stakes and leaving the Big Sky behind.

with better leadership we could develop our wind energy which would require assembly plants close to final destination-hundreds more well-paying jobs. With proper encouragement the Flathead area could become Montana’s Silicone Valley. The Republican created 300% electrical energy cost increase did more to drive jobs out of Montana than any fifty environmental groups. Zinc Air battery could be the seed of an alternative energy industry if we let it. The aluminum smelter sitting empty would make a good factory and many of the former workers are still around…

Both parties are indeed “the party of business.” Both take business’s money to fund campaigns. In exchange, both do what they are told by business lobbyists. This can be observed any day the legislature meets. The rest is theatre.